topic Re: Using Digital Photo Pro for Mac with Photos on an External Drive in Camera Software

Using Digital Photo Pro for Mac with Photos on an External Drive

olyduck — Wed, 15 Mar 2023 23:36:42 GMT

About a year ago, I installed DPP onto my Mac. The program opened just fine and the file menu could "see" my Mac's my external drive where my Photos Library was located, but was UNABLE to display thumbnails or allow me to open an image. At the time, a Canon rep told me that DPP was not designed to work with a Photos Library on an external drive. I found this hard to believe, given how many folks keep their photos on external drives.

Has anything changed in this regard with newer versions of DPP?

Thanks,

David

Re: Using Digital Photo Pro for Mac with Photos on an External Drive

Landon_H — Thu, 16 Mar 2023 00:00:50 GMT

Not exactly the same problem but recent problems with DPP on finding files at locations other than the Macintosh HD. I haven't tried an external drive w/DPP but if I see different behavior than you, I'll let you know.

Macbook (Ventura 13.2.1) and DPP4 (Version 4.17.20... - Canon Community

Re: Using Digital Photo Pro for Mac with Photos on an External Drive

rs-eos — Thu, 16 Mar 2023 00:08:56 GMT

Long shot, but perhaps this is due to incorrect privacy settings?

While I don't have DPP, I did need to adjust settings for various apps such as Adobe Lightroom to ensure that all my removable volumes were accessible to it.

The following notes are for macOS Ventura (13.x), but there are similar settings in prior OS versions.

Launch System Settings
Open the Privacy & Security panel
Select the Files and Folders item
Locate the apps you need to check in the list and click on the disclosure indicator to reveal the individual settings.

Example from my settings regarding Adobe Lightroom:

Re: Using Digital Photo Pro for Mac with Photos on an External Drive

olyduck — Thu, 16 Mar 2023 00:21:02 GMT

I never thought of that. I'll give it a try. Thanks!

Re: Using Digital Photo Pro for Mac with Photos on an External Drive

Landon_H — Thu, 16 Mar 2023 01:09:33 GMT

I do not have options to select anything other than the top three for DPP (Desktop Folder, Documents Folder, Downloads Folder). My Adobe products do have additional toggles for other locations including Removable and Network Volumes.

Re: Using Digital Photo Pro for Mac with Photos on an External Drive

rs-eos — Thu, 16 Mar 2023 02:50:54 GMT

I wonder if you could add DPP to the Full Disk Access permissions:

In the System Settings application, select Privacy & Security
Select the Full Disk Access item
Scroll to the very bottom of the list and click on "+" (you'll most likely be challenged to enter your password).
Once you unlock the settings, you should see an Open dialog to choose an application (should default to your Applications folder). Select the DPP app.
Once you add DPP to the Full Disk Access list, you may then need to ensure the switch next to that item is turned on.

Re: Using Digital Photo Pro for Mac with Photos on an External Drive

Landon_H — Thu, 16 Mar 2023 11:15:25 GMT

I don't mean to hijack this discussion.

Have tried Full Access previously but just did it again. No luck w/DPP recognizing anything other than the Mac HD. Appreciate the help.

Re: Using Digital Photo Pro for Mac with Photos on an External Drive

johnrmoyer — Thu, 16 Mar 2023 14:20:52 GMT

I hope some of this might be helpful. I have a 2019 iMac running Ventura 13.2.1. I have upgraded the RAM to 96 GB and that seems to me to speed up file access by caching.

I have noticed with the newest macOS some permissions are only set at software install and not available in the settings menus later if on an Intel CPU instead of Arm64. Sometimes it works to delete the software, download it again, and install it again.

For me, privacy and security -> files and folders -> Digital Photo professional
has enabled "Desktop Folder", "Documents Folder", "Downloads Folder", "Network Volumes", and "Removable Volumes". I do not have full disk access enabled for DPP.

Access to network volumes is very slow starting up probably because I have disabled Finder indexing of network volumes.

macOS is only willing to access a few types of file systems without third party drivers. My network drives are attached to a Debian Linux computer and shared via SMB. NTFS file systems for example do not work with macOS without a 3rd party driver. Some types of FAT file systems also do not work.

Re: Using Digital Photo Pro for Mac with Photos on an External Drive

DanMorganPhoto — Tue, 21 Mar 2023 19:13:45 GMT

I saw a few questions about access when I first downloaded, as someone else mentioned, and I guess I should have checked those boxes but I did not. I thought I could correct later in preferences, cannot find. Do I really have to delete, and redownload?

Re: Using Digital Photo Pro for Mac with Photos on an External Drive

DanMorganPhoto — Tue, 21 Mar 2023 19:32:17 GMT

Full Disk Access trick worked for me! Thank You!!!!!!!!!

Re: Using Digital Photo Pro for Mac with Photos on an External Drive

johnrmoyer — Tue, 21 Mar 2023 21:44:56 GMT

I am able to change those settings in the settings menus. If you cannot and need different settings and depending upon which mac hardware you have, another way to get access to those settings sometimes is to delete the app, download the app again, and install the app again. I suggest trying the settings menu first and see if that gets you what you want. It may be necessary to type in a password to change the settings.

settings -> privacy and security -> files and folders -> Digital Photo professional
has enabled on my computer "Desktop Folder", "Documents Folder", "Downloads Folder", "Network Volumes", and "Removable Volumes". I do not have full disk access enabled for DPP.

Re: Using Digital Photo Pro for Mac with Photos on an External Drive

javiergonzales — Sun, 29 Dec 2024 13:42:40 GMT

I kept my Photos Library on a drive to save space, but DPP couldn't open the images or show thumbnails either. I reached out to Canon, and like you mentioned, they told me it wasn't designed for that setup. I found it odd, too, since many people store their photos on external drives for better organization. For what it's worth, I ended up using my Nixplay digital picture frame to showcase some of my favorite photos from the external drive. It wasn't a perfect solution, but it worked for enjoying my pictures in a more visual way.

Re: Using Digital Photo Pro for Mac with Photos on an External Drive

johnrmoyer — Thu, 26 Dec 2024 14:25:04 GMT

@javiergonzales wrote:

kept my Photos Library on a drive to save space, but DPP couldn't open the images or show thumbnails either. I reached out to Canon, and like you mentioned, they told me it wasn't designed for that setup. I found it odd, too, since many people store their photos on external drives for better organization.

I do not know what software you have used to put photos into a Photo Library, but it will likely be necessary to that same software to export those photos from that library before they can be edited by another program.

I do not put my photos into a "library" but keep them as ordinary files. If in a library, I would need to use the software that created or understands the library to export the photos as ordinary files so that I could edit them with other programs.

Apple Photos creates one sort of library, darktable another, and software from Adobe yet another.

On macOS, I use ksh as my login shell because that is what I have been using on various Unix systems since 1987, so my methods might not be useful to those who do not use command lines in a terminal. On macOS, in finder one may Ctrl-click on an ordinary photo file and choose "Open With->Other->Canon Utilities->Digital Photo Professional 4->Digital Photo Professional 4.app" and DPP will open the file if the file is one that was created by a Canon camera or by Canon software.